II
But though he had lost his tools, Gutenberg had not lost his courage. And he had not lost all his friends. One of them had money, and he bought Gutenberg a new set of tools and hired a workshop for him. And now at last Gutenberg's hopes were fulfilled.
First of all it is thought that he made types of hard wood. Each type was a little block with a single letter at one end. Such types were a great deal better than block letters. The block letters were fixed. They could not be taken out of the words of which they were parts. The new types were movable so they could be set up to print one page, then taken apart and set up again and again to print any number of pages.
But type made of wood did not always print the letters clearly and distinctly, so Gutenberg gave up wood types and tried metal types. Soon a Latin Bible was printed. It was in two volumes, each of which had three hundred pages, while each of the pages had forty-two lines. The letters were sharp and clear. They had been printed from movable types of metal.
III
The Dutch claim that Lorenz Coster, a native of Harlem, in the Netherlands, was the first person who printed with movable type. They say that Coster was one day taking a walk in a beech forest not far from Harlem, and that he cut bark from one of the trees and shaped it with his knife into letters.
Not long after this the Dutch say Coster had made movable types and was printing and selling books in Harlem.
The news that books were being printed in Mainz by Gutenberg went all over Europe, and before he died printing-presses like his were at work making books in all the great cities of the continent.
About twenty years after his death, when Venice was the richest of European cities, a man named Al'-dus Ma-nu'tius established there the most famous printing house of that time. He was at work printing books two years before Columbus sailed on his first voyage. The descendents of Aldus continued the business after his death for about one hundred years. The books published by them were called "Aldine," from Aldus. They were the most beautiful that had ever come from the press. They are admired and valued to this day.